Report Comment to a ModeratorOur Moderators review all comments for abusive and offensive language, and ensure comments are from Verified Users only.Please report a comment only if you feel it requires our urgent attention.I understand, report it.Cancel

Hiring Ginsburg is a positive move for the troubled social gaming company, because Schappert is not the only executive to leave in recent months. Indeed, another two key employees resigned yesterday: Bill Mooney, former general manager of FarmVille and vice president of studios, and Brian Birtwhistle, vice president of marketing.

The choice of Ginzburg is particularly telling given Zynga's growing interest in real-money gambling. A key factor in the company's present decline is a perceived lack of growth in its core businesses. Online gambling is a new market, and Zynga will release a real-money poker game next year.

Games Jobs

9 Comments

The writing is on the wall here. If/when the USA makes online gambling legal Zynga will be there. In lots of ways they are positioning themselves for this. And their knowledge of metrics and behaviour will allow them to create compelling offerings.

Well you could say, games was just a shopefront facade to gain a war chest, but really the evolution from marketing company to gambling, was the most natural long term plan...we were just suckers for thinking they would eventually make good games after various mea culpas.

It’s not uncommon for some employees to move on at this stage in the life of a startup. “When you have a brilliant founder who wants to go the distance, not everybody stays with him,” Gordon said.

One of the problems Zynga is going to have to overcome is that those people who want to place real money bets are probably already doing it. Zynga is not going to be the the first or only site to offer real money betting. If a player likes the site they are on, why switch to another site?

This will fail miserably in the US because of the states who will fight against it, the parents who will think these companies are targeting kids, the anti-gambling crowd who will see it as a new way to hook people and whatever politicians on the latest anti-gaming treadmill want to use this as a reason that gaming will turn Little Johnny into a switchblade-wielding juvenile delinquent or whatever.

Unless (of course) someone figures out how to get those states against it a cut of the profits in the form of taxes so they can balance their budgets on all the fools throwing their money away. It'll be a fun fight, that's for sure...